United States Biomedical Science Policy: Success, Failure & Recommendation: Past, Present & Future

The United States (U.S.) has long been a leader in biomedical research. After World War II, Vannevar Bush’s report on the value of government investment in science, including biomedical research, launched the National Science Foundation (NSF) while rapidly expanding the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and research funding across fields. For 75 years, US federally funded biomedical research has been a model and magnet for researchers around the globe, while US biomedical research policy has helped shape the current ecosystem across sectors worldwide. This includes both large scale success, as well as challenges that face biomedical research such as ethical issues, challenges with publishing and science communication, reproducibility and replicability issues, and more.

However, this ecosystem faces significant and evolving challenges: ethical dilemmas, hurdles in publishing and science communication, as well as persistent concerns about reproducibility and replicability. In early 2025, the arrival of a new US federal administration prompted sweeping policy shifts in areas ranging from funding and publishing mandates to technology adoption and animal modeling among others. These developments have intensified public and academic debate, drawing renewed attention to both persistent issues and dated practices within US biomedical science policy.

A dimension that warrants particular attention is the increasing importance of a systems perspective in current and future biomedical policy. The use of systems-based approaches, such as computational modeling, artificial intelligence, and integrative analyses, can help address long-standing issues in the field. For instance, advances in computational and systems biology methods have not only driven technology development but have also reduced the need for animal usage, exemplified by the move towards in silico modeling and simulation. By streamlining what have traditionally been reductionist, hypothesis-driven studies, such approaches can also help reduce research cost and increase both efficiency and reproducibility. These activities illustrate how policy reform, when informed and guided by systems thinking, can yield improvements across the biomedical research spectrum.

This Topic focuses on the evaluation of past and current biomedical science policies in the US, including their global impact and alternatives, along with recommendations for evidence-based future policy recommendations. Topic areas can include research funding, governance, translation, implementation, evaluation, communication, publishing, economic or mission return on investment, and other critical activities and impacts, examined explicitly through a systems lens.

To gather further insights in the evaluation and reinvention of US biomedical science policy, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
• Historical foundations and evolutionary trends of US biomedical policy
• Governance, funding, and translation: mechanisms, challenges, and opportunities
• Systems approaches and technology: computational modeling, AI, integrative analysis, and network medicine as drivers of policy innovation
• Research reproducibility, ethical standards, and communication: challenges and solutions
• Economic and social returns on biomedical research investments
• The role of systems biology in resolving reproducibility and ethical challenges
• Translational impact and technology adoption in biomedical research

Paper types can be original research, reviews, methods, brief reports, perspectives and conceptual proposals.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Biomedical Policy, Research Funding, Ethical Challenges, Technology Adoption, Reproducibility

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.